A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a free program called Calibre. In the first post, we discussed what a great tool Calibre was for ebook management but the real beauty of Calibre is its iPhone/Sony Reader/Cybook interface. Calibre was first developed to assist Sony Reader users to add content to the device. Because it is open source, ebook readers with technological skills have added and enhanced Calibre to the point that it serves as a beautiful convergence program connecting your ebook library to both an iPhone and a Sony Reader. The key to this is Calibre’s ability to output content in “epub” format.

If you’ve read the Sunday articles here at Dear Author, you know that there are a number of formats for ebooks. There is a push amongst publishers and other ebook aficianodos (word doc) to create an industry standard and that format is ePub. Sony Reader and the Stanza application on the iPhone both read the ePub format. Calibre allows you to take ebooks from all over the web and convert them into epub format. I’ve converted hundreds of books from all different formats and generally, the transition is very smooth.

Conversion

I’m not going to belabor adding books to Calibre as I blogged about that previously. In this article, I’m going to assume that you know how to add a book into Calibre and edit the metadata. The first step in conversion is making sure you have a non DRM’ed digital book in a format that Calibre can convert. Those formats are as follows: Mobi, Lit, PRC, ePub, ODT, HTML, CBR, CBZ, RTF, TXT, and PDF. PDF converts the worse and LIT converts the best. Set the Output to “EPUB” instead of “LRF”. (Output is found in the upper right hand area).

What do I do with a Microsoft Word file (also known as a doc file)? I recommended opening the document and saving as “RTF” and then re-importing it into Calibre.

What do I do with my PDFs? I recommend opening the PDF and saving as either an html or an RTF document first, and then converting the resulting file using Calibre.

In the dropdown box of the Convert Ebook button, is the selection “Set Conversion Defaults.” Here you can modify the look and feel of the book, the margin size, the metadata and cover, and finally, chapter detection for books that do not have a built in Table of Contents.

Having a table of contents is unnecessary for reading the ebook but can provide a nice navigational tool. In order to change the chapter detection, you must follow XPATH tutorial. XPATH is a bit foreign to me, but you only need to use this if it is absolutely necessary for you to have a table of contents and the original ebook did not do a good job in setting those out.

Once you have your configuration set, simply highlight the titles you want converted and press the button (which requires you to review each book individually) or select “bulk convert” in the drop down box. Once the books are converted, you can highlight the books you want to transfer over and then press “Send to Device”. It’s as easy as that.

Iphone

The little hammer on Calibre’s upper right side is the Configuration button. The fourth icon on the left side is “Content Server”. You can set up a username and password for your collection. Clicking “start server” will launch a script that opens up your Calibre data to be read over the internet. To access your content via the iPhone, download Stanza. Open it and Click on “Online Catalog”.

You’ll be presented with a list of catalogs like Fictionwise and All Romance eBooks. At the bottom right hand side is a small plus sign. When you click on that, you can Add Catalog. Click on Add Stanza Catalog.

Give your catalog a name like Calibre or Personal Collection or whatever makes you happy. Then you’ll need to enter the URL for your Calibre catalog. First, you’ll need to know what your IP address is. You can figure that out by typing in “WhatIsMyIP.Com” in your web browser. (or by clicking the link). In the URL space in Stanza type in your IP address and at then end, add :8080/stanza and then Save. Again, that is http://IPAdress:8080/stanza. If you go back to Calibre, you’ll note that 8080 is the port through which Calibre communicates to the internet. Think of 8080 as the apartment number/room number to your building/house. The IP Address is the main building or house. And, of course, the main building is your computer.

Now you can access your Calibre library via the iPhone and anybook in ePub will be able to be download and read via the Stanza application.

The Always On feature.

If you have a computer that is always connected to the internet, you can set up a way to access the Calibre location no matter where you are, so long as you have cell service. For this, you need No-IP.com. Most people have internet connection via a DSL or Cable or even AOL. Unless you pay for a static IP address, your computer is assigned a “dynamic” IP which can change from time to time. If your IP changes, you need to edit the URL in Stanza or you won’t be able to access the Calibre catalog. A way to get around that is to sign up for a free service like NO-IP.com that can redirect traffic to your dynamic IP. You sign up for the service and then run NO-IP DUC program on your computer. This program updates your dynamic IP address constantly. So long as your computer, the Calibre server, and the NO-IP DUC program is running, you should be able to access your Calibre catalog from your iPhone anywhere and everywhere. Neat huh?

Get Kindle-like Content without the Kindle Price.

One thing that Kindle offers is Newspapers and Magazines but for a cost. You can get the same content nicely formatted for your Sony Reader or even the iPhone using Calibre’s Fetch News feature. I have absolutely no programming skills, but the folks at Mobile Read have been offering up “recipes” to create news content regularly. How does this work? Well, for the technologically challenged, like me, you simply click on “Fetch news” and then “Schedule news download”. There are a number of custom recipes for many of the popular newsites on the internet.

Simply click on the newsite you want to add and schedule the download. There’s even a Google Reader recipe so you can download all the items in your Google Reader each day and load them onto the Sony. Under “Configuration -> Interface” (remember, the little hammer?), you can set the program to delete the “news” from the library after it is sent to the Sony Reader.

I’m experimenting with a Dear Author recipe and once I figure that out, I’ll try to do some for our favorite romance places like Smart Bitches and so forth.

I hope these two articles give you the basics on how to use Calibre to interface with your iPhone reading program and your Sony Reader. It’s not as hard as it might seem at first. The key to this program is to remember that it is an open source free program and that you, as the user, play an important role in reporting bugs at mobileread.com so that each release is better, cleaner and more bug free. If you have any questions, drop a comment and we’ll see if we can help you out.

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

54 Comments

I love Calibre and as a Mac user, it has has been a big help to me. I actually bought an ASUS eePC, hoping to use it with my Sony PRS 505. Instead, having discovered Calibre (Mac version), I have been using it to convert and transfer all my ebooks from my Mac to the Sony PRS. The only thing my ASUS was any good for was that I used it to upgrade the Sony firmware and to use it to recognize my Sony Reader (you only have to do it once) so I can transfer my DRM Adobe books from my Mac to the Reader. Now, this ASUS PC is pretty much useless to me.

What do I do with a Microsoft Word file (also known as a doc file)? I recommended opening the document and saving as â€œRTFâ€ and then re-importing it into Calibre.

What do I do with my PDFs? I recommend opening the PDF and saving as either an html or an RTF document first, and then converting the resulting file using Calibre.

This was the one thing that I didn’t want to have to do, because I get a lot of submissions in DOC format, and opening and resaving every one would be time consuming. It was one of the reasons I liked being able to send wirelessly to the Kindle, since sending over the Whispernet they got converted for me. But when I switched to the Sony and started using Calibre, the first order of business was to search out a program that would effortlessly convert DOCs to RTF (either in single files or batch). I found this free program, ConvertDoc, which works really well and is a huge time saver. It not only converts DOC to RTF, but will do the same for PDF to RTF (and HTML, DOCx, and TXT, all to RTF, or vice versa)

I’m glad you addressed the news feeds. I’ve been looking at that but haven’t played with it yet.

Thanks for the tip on converting PDFs to html, Jane. And thanks also to Angela, although note that ConvertDoc only works on Macs through Parallels.

I burned a weekend converting a bunch of books for the Sony Reader. I found that ePub was not quite as reliable a conversion from different formats as .lrf; some files hung for ages and then had error messages or just didn’t convert at all. The pdf-to-html might take care of some of that, since I think I had the most glitches on pdf files. I also converted the docs to rtfs, because rtfs and lit seem to be the formats that convert most accurately to ePub and lrf.

If anyone else runs into my problems, I recommend trying .lrf before you throw up your hands in frustration. It’s not as pretty a page rendering, and the text doesn’t retain the original page numbers the way it does in ePub, but it’s very readable.

Also, I recommend that people play around with the font size in both lrf and ePub; I found the size in lrf to be bigger than I wanted.

Well, LIT converts the best to…anything. Rarely do I get errors. Also, I’m LAZY and have been manually putting ePub books on my iPhone via the Stanza desktop application. Just open it up, add the (1) book and then go to your Stanza app and select online sharing and voila! It’s there. It’s tedious but that’s me, tedious and lazy. Did I say that without Calibre, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed my Sony? I probably would have returned it if not for this program. Edited to add that the Sony Reader is the BEST reader for those with an existing library.

Just want to make sure you’re feeling the lurve for all your hard work compiling the info for these ereader posts, Jane. Thank you.

Now if only my local Borders could get around to displaying a WORKING Sony Reader, I just might be able to evaluate one. The 700 hasn’t worked for over a month (actually I’m not sure it ever did), and the 505 has been broken for at least a month. An email complaint to Borders resulted in a phone call from the local Borders telling me they were now working. Uh, if they were, they were broken again immediately. So either they’ve got a ridiculously short battery life or they are extremely fragile, or I was lied to. Fail.

Oops, sorry for the side rant. Anyway, my point is that, whether I end up with a Sony Reader, the larger size iPhone/iTouch, or some as yet unreleased reader, I have no doubt that your in-depth posts will make my transition to these devices so much smoother than they would have been through my own trial and (mostly) error.

PS: None of the FW DRM formats left, work on a Sony, am I understanding that correctly?

Yes. FW has lrf for its non-DRM books, but it only has LIT, eReader, and Mobi for DRM so far as I can tell, and they don’t always have all three for all DRM’d books. I assume people buy LIT and strip the DRM if they transfer FW books onto their Readers, but I don’t so I’m only inferring from people’s comments.

If you are knowledgeable about Python script, there are programs that strip DRM from eReader and Mobi, but I have no personal experience with them so I can’t speak to the quality of the transfers. There are lots of people on Mobileread who seem knowledgeable, however. Obligatory observation that such stripping violates terms of sale in the US.

Now if only my local Borders could get around to displaying a WORKING Sony Reader, I just might be able to evaluate one. The 700 hasn't worked for over a month (actually I'm not sure it ever did), and the 505 has been broken for at least a month.

Bev, I’m assuming you don’t have a Sony Style store anywhere nearby? That’s where I finally saw and compared them. Of course, my local store has now been shut down, but I managed to get in there in their last couple of months of operation and the sales clerks were very helpful.

@Sunita: Nope, small town Ohio, so only Borders carries them. No Sony store and our Best Buy, Target and Walmart do not carry them either. In fact, if/when Borders and Waldens close, that will be it for bookstores without hitting the interstate. And frankly, the Sony Reader costs enough without me shelling out return postage (and possibly restocking fees) if I return it because I don’t like it. Although I suppose I should clarify that I am only considering the 700, not the 505, because of the 700’s ability to add text notes.

One thing I would like to see (on the chance the developer is reading this thread) is the ability to be able to set Book series numbers to 00 or .5 numbers (like 1.5) for some series. Right now it defaults to 1 or to whole numbers, which seems reasonable except some authors write novellas or free stories in between regular releases and number them .5, and for those that write prequels later on, 00 is how they’re sometimes numbered.

I really love this program, I actually donated a few days ago because it’s so useful to me.

The transfer from Calibre to Stanza on ipod (at least 2^ gen) requires a wi-fi connection. I think it would be interesting a how-to in the case that you have only a PC with a wireless card (and no wireless router).

I succeded with vista, but I don’t know if it is possible with, say, XP.

All my ebooks now reside in my Calibre library. Question for those with iphones/ipod touch – do the Calibre converted epub files retain their formatting, ie italics, centering, etc. when viewed with Stanza on the iphone? Do you have problems with dashes and accent marks not converting?

I am still with my Palm TX but going down the epub road means, for me, getting an ipod touch someday (Sony Readers not available in Australia) so want to know its worth it.

What do I do with my PDFs? I recommend opening the PDF and saving as either an html or an RTF document first, and then converting the resulting file using Calibre.

Well, “Convert Doc” was already mentioned by Angela James. Another option for converting PDFs is the Mobipocket Creator which does often produce better results than Calibres internal PDF-converter. Mobipocket creator converts the PDFs to HTML which can then be used within Calibre for further conversion.

@Devon If you want to get books from eHarlequin onton an iPhone/iTouch, you need to buy MS LIt and then strip it of its DRM using convertlit gui (disclaimer, this is illegal in the US due to the DMCA). There is no hack for Adobe PDF. The other option is to google for the python Mobipocket hack and head over to MobileRead to figure out how to use the command line interface to remove the DRM from Mobipocket.

Thank you for these tips. I will be referring back to this post next time I open Calibre. I thought at first that it was just a very bulky, clumsy program, but now I think I may have just not been using it correctly.

I found a website that has ebooks for the ipod. Can I switch them to read on my sony reader with Calibre? You have a choice to download as .txt, .pdf. Which should I choose and do I need to convert to something first before transferring to sony reader?

@ Jane: you refer to the command line utility for Calibre–HOW do I access it? I want to convert from either .prc or .epub or .lrf to .html or .txt or something I can edit (or use Mobipocket Creator on), and I need the command line to do it. I’m probably being incredibly obtuse, but am at my wits’ end! Any help would be enormously appreciated…
Katherine

Hi. maybe some of the posts above addressed this, but I’m simple and can’t understand them. Reader Library on my Mac won’t recognize my PRS600. I installed calibre and succeeded in getting the books to the reader, but when I try to open them now they say “protected page.” I can’t get any useful information from the phone or chat help at Reader Library or Calibre or Digital Editions, and I’ve been trying since Christmas. I’d deeply appreciate any help any of you could give me. Thank you.

I went through these steps and everything worked beautifully, until i uploaded a few more books/converted them in Calibre. Then when i logged on to stanza on my iPhone, it only showed the first one, but not the others, and a few days later, still doesn’t I thought it might be the static ip thing, so i signed up at no-ip.com and got my own, and even tried logging on with that URL in Stanza, but that didn’t work either. Any idea why this would work once but not again? none of my additional books are showing. I tried opening Calibre and starting that server and selecting for it to start automatically. Is this a propagation issue? if so, why did the first one appear in Stanza right away?

@Kelli Jae Baeli: I’m not sure Kelli. It seems odd that the first book would show, but not later books. Usually if you can’t connect to the Calibre catalog it will time out. Given that you can, it might mean that your books are not converted? They have to be in epub format to show up on the iPhone, I believe.

@Jane: Well it is timing out when i go to the catalog–but when i select by titles or authors, it shows just the one book. And yes, they were in ePub format, just like the first one.
Will check out your link. Thanks for the response.

@Jane: well it was set up first with the URL as http://(my ip addy):8080/stanza. That one didn’t work after the first time, so i used the no-ip address i was assigned, and that one didn’t work either. Not sure how to verify if the no-ip addy is working…will have to see if i can find out how to test it. But i double checked all the URL addys to make sure they were correct, yet this problem remained. My understanding is that once they’re converted in Calibre (to ePub)and showing in the windows/library, and the server is set to automatic, that it should just appear when i log into that catalog for my books on Stanza. But, they don’t appear. ;^(

@Kelli Jae Baeli In your Calibre Preferences what port are you using? Is it 8080 or something else? Also, if your iPhone and Calibre is on the same wifi network, you should be able to discover the Calibre server automatically under “get books” and “computers Sharing Books”

@Jane: okay, I went into control panel on my computer and went to INternet options>security>trusted sites and entered http://www.lexcycle.com as a trusted site, and then i changed the URL in stanza login back to the http://(my ip addy):8080/stanza. When i logged into stanza online catalog>KJB books it showed the listing by author title, etc and when i selected TITLE it gave me TWO of my books. Better than one, but there’s still some reason the others aren’t showing up.

*I also tested the server in Calibre and it brought up the list of my books and all of them were there. Does that help? is it still an issue with connecting to Calibre, or no?
*when i changed the URL in stanza back to the no-ip addy, it timed out.
*changed back to the http://(my ip addy):8080/stanza addy again, and now it’s timing out again, too.
lol. wow. I’m not sure what else to try.

@Kelli Jae Baeli: You can also upload your books to fictionwise (requires creating a free account…) They have a “Personal Content” section, where members are allowed up to 25mb at a time. I have used this because I prefer the Ereader interface to Stanza on my ipod touch. I convert from various formats, upload from my pc to my fictionwise bookshelf, get online with the itouch, download the books to ereader. Works great.

This is great thread. I’m not sure if my Kindle question is relevant here but if anyone can share with me I’d be very thankful. My only problem with calibre (so far) is “sometimes” the programme can’t convert quotation marks, so ” becomes ? througout.

[…] Digital books can be difficult to keep track of, particularly if you shop at more than one digital book store. I really love a free program called Calibre. In it’s most simplistic use, Calibre is intended to be an ebook organization tool. You can organize your books by author, title, series, publisher, personal tags, and personal ratings and any other custom field you may think of. Take a look at a few of my Calibre posts here and here if you are interested in a great and free organizational too. Part 1 and Part 2. […]

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